​Brazil has already lost and it’s the people who pay the price

Mark Bergfeld is a writer and activist based in Cologne, Germany and London, UK. He was a leading participant in the UK student movement in 2010. He holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and a MA in Sociology from the University of Essex, as well as a MRes in Business and Management from Queen Mary College, London. He regularly writes for magazines and websites such as AJE, The Nation, Jacobin Magazine and others. He is the editor of the e-book “Portugal, 40 years after the Revolution”. His writings can be found at mdbergfeld.com. Twitter @mdbergfeld

Envisaged to give Brazil's economy a second wind, the spiraling
costs of building modern-day temples has caused a veritable
storm. While the protests have diminished in recent weeks and the
beautiful game has taken over, the questions facing Brazilian
society remain the same: Where and how is money spent in
Brazilian society?

In Brazilian cities such as Porto Alegre citizens were allowed to
democratically decide how their tax money was spent, and how
their public services run through 'participatory budgeting' at
the beginning of this century. Today, Lula’s
successor Dilma Rousseff and her left-wing Workers' Party (PT)
have turned from people's power to the power of hosting
mega-events for the one per cent. And the FIFA and the IOC
dictate their budgets – even beyond the gates of the Maracana
Stadium. The human cost involved should not come as a surprise.

'They robbed the people’

Even before the slowing-down of the world economy in 2008,
mega-events such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup were
disastrous for large sections of the local population. In their
article “Impacts of the Olympic Games as mega-events”,
Malfas, Theodaraki and Houlihan outline how more than 15,000
residents were evicted from public housing projects for the
Olympic Centenary in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996. Meanwhile,
homeless shelters were converted into backpacker hostels during
the Games themselves.

In the run-up to this World Cup, displacement and gentrification
have reached new heights. Street children have been removed from
the city centers and the vicinity of the stadiums for the
duration of the games just to find themselves homeless once the
winner of the World Cup is announced. The losers of this World
Cup have not been Portugal, England, Italy or Spain who entered
this tournament with high aims yet were eliminated at the group
stage. The real losers are the inhabitants of Brazil’s popular
neighborhoods – the favelas. More than 250,000 people have
already been (or at are at risk of being) removed, with 90,000 in
Sao Paulo alone. The situation will only worsen with the Rio
Olympics only two years away.

Former football star, Romario, has harshly criticized FIFA and
the World Cup. He told the New York Times: “FIFA got
what it came for: money. If you spend 30 percent less on
stadiums, they’d be able to improve other things that actually
matter…They found a way to get rich on the World Cup and they
robbed the people instead. This is the real shame.”
Survey after survey has shown that the majority of Brazilians
have been against holding the World Cup in their
country.
Yet, they have been denied any say at a political level. Nor do
they have any stake in how the revenue generated from this
mega-event could be used in the future.

Where do all the profits go?

Of course, the World Cup has created jobs in areas stricken with
high rates of poverty and illiteracy, but the vast majority of
these jobs are low-paid and temporary. Jobs in construction, the
service-industry, and sex and tourism sector are not a viable
economic plan to secure Brazil’s future as an engine of growth.
Thus, FIFA’s promise of development is nothing less than a sick
joke.

In fact, construction workers have had to pay with their lives.
Reports claim that at least eight workers were killed while
the numbers of those injured in work-related accidents is far
higher. Meanwhile architectural companies with locust-like
behavior such as the German architectural firm GMP make record profits from their lucrative
deals with FIFA. By now it should be more than obvious that GMP
who also designed and planned the stadium for the 2010 World Cup
in Durban, South Africa will not reinvest its profits into Brazil
but will move on to wherever the buck stops next.

The money generated from television rights, merchandise, and
drink sales during the World Cup will not trickle down into the
local economy or be re-invested where it was made. Instead it
flows back to Switzerland where FIFA – nominally a charity -
currently sits on more than one billion tax-exempt US Dollars. To make
matters worse, Budweiser, one of the World Cup’s prime sponsors,
forced the Brazilian government to renege on its alcohol ban in football stadiums
thus undermining its democracy and sovereignty.

Yet for Brazil’s tiny elite this is a perfect storm and a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restructure society in its own
image. By hosting mega-events such the Pan-Am Games (2007), the
Confederations Cup (2013), the World Cup and then the Olympic
Games in 2016 they hope to turn their state into one big
gated-community and show that Brazil is a global player able to
compete against the EU and USA. While hosting World Cups does not
deliver growth, as several studies have shown, it builds Brazil’s
brand as a tourist destination. But this cheap marketing gimmick
comes with a huge price tag attached to it.

Football for the One Percent

The story of modern football’s most glorious temple, the Maracana
stadium, built for the 1954 World Cup epitomizes the changes
happening throughout Brazilian society. In order for Maracana to
meet “FIFA standards” the standing area had to be torn
down and replaced with VIP-lounges. The original’s stadium
capacity of approximately 200,000 has been reduced to roughly
75,000 in the course of the last decades.

Where once the crowds and "populares" roared to the goals of
Pele, Socratés and Romario, the rich now wine and dine before or
after visiting the stadium’s very own shopping mall. Brazilian
photojournalist Sergio Moraes recently lamented that it is
“soulless” and has nothing to do with the
stadium that once was labeled the “Sistine Chapel of
Football”.

Much like stadiums and arenas of the 2004 Athens Olympics
resemble ruins in Ancient Olympia today, it is likely that the Arena de
Amazonias in Manaus will suffer the same fate. After only four
games in the group stage, the lights have already been turned
off. There is simply no demand for a stadium with 41 000 seats in
a city cut off from major motorways and with neither a first or
second league team. But it appears that Rousseff and Brazil’s
elite could not care less as long as Brazil’s team, the Selecao,
performs well.

For as long as they remain in the competition Brazil’s
fundamental problems can be brushed under the carpet with
relative ease. But the final is only two weeks away and one thing
is already certain: Brazil’s majority has lost off the pitch.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.